Monday, August 1, 2011

Vaseline is more than the goopy stuff you put on your baby’s behinds.It has uses ranging from homesteading to medicinal. Some of these unique uses for Vaseline can be found at Joey Green’s website, who seems find wacky uses for just about everything.

Vaseline is a mixture of mineral oils, paraffin and micro-crystalline waxes that, when blended together, creates a jelly-like feel. Since it has a melting point just above body temperature, it re-solidifies, thus locking itself in place. Vaseline is a low cost, multi-purpose prep that should be in every prepper’s storage closet.

Homesteading

Petroleum jelly can be used for tinder,lightly coated on a cotton ball.

Lure Trout – Smearing Vaseline on small pieces of sponges and hooking them onto fish hooks will trick the fish into thinking the sponge coated Vaseline is fish eggs

Lubricates tools and protects them from rusting.

Rub some Vaseline on the wheels of wagons to keep them lubricated and protect them from rust.

Protects leather and softens it.

Rub Vaseline around candle holders and the wax will not stick to them.

Petrolatum is a useful material when incorporated into candle wax formulas. The petrolatum softens the overall blend, allows the candle to incorporate additional fragrance oil, and facilitates adhesion to the sidewall of glass.

Use it as a lubricant on your sailboat’s spinnaker pole.

Personal

Vaseline is an effective moisturizer.

It is used as a key ingredient for conditioners of ethnic hair.

It is used in pomades to help users sculpt their hair.

Removes make-up.

Medicinal

When petroleum jelly is applied under the eyes, and can be used to prevent dirt or sand from irritating the eye.

Applying Vaseline to lips to helps to protect them from chapping.

Vaseline helps to prevent windburn by creating a barrier on top of the skin to protect it from the wind.

Put it on scrapes and cuts to use as a barrier to keep moisture out.

Make your own vapor rub using Vaseline and combining essential oils such as eucalyptus and mint oil.

It lubricates psoriasis and eczema prone skin to help get rid of the dry patches.

When applied thick to the scalp, it eliminates lice by smothering them.

It helps to heal burns and moisturizes the skin.

When placed under the nose, Vaseline can help minimize allergies by trapping pollen before it enters the nostrils.

It helps heal poison ivy lesions.

Note: DO NOT apply Vaseline to the insides of the nose due to the risk of lipoid pneumonia.

Obama is the enemy. Obama is a Marxist-Communist usurper and puppet front for a cabal of Marxist-Communists who are actively trying to destroy the United States of America. Everything they have done, are doing, and will do has the single goal of collapsing and destroying the U.S. economy, military, constitutional government and culture. What part of "Marxist Revolution" do you not understand?

The Obama regime is not a failure. The Obama regime is not incompetent. The Obama regime has achieved more in two and a half years than anyone could have possibly foreseen. It has debased the currency by 50% of the GDP and guaranteed that our economy will collapse. It has looted the Treasury for more than the size of a top-ten economy and embezzled that wealth into the hands of their fellow Marxists in preparation for the final collapse of the United States. It has ground the economy of the United States to a screeching halt. It has destabilized the entire Muslim world and ensured that there will be a nuclear war centered around Israel within the decade.

The Obama regime has no interest whatsoever in "stimulus" or "getting folks back to work." How can you not understand this? How can we possibly win this war if we refuse to come to terms with the fact that we are in fact fighting a war.

God save the United States of America, because the people are far too stupid to do it themselves.

The Supreme Court is set to decide on the constitutionality of Obama’s health care reform, particularly its individual mandate—the forcing of American to buy health insurance. Opponents of the law especially worry that the precedent would mean that the federal government could essentially mandate or prohibit any commercial behavior in the guise of interstate commerce.

Ominously, a federal judge with conservative reputation, formerly a clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, has upheld the law. Is there hope that the Supremes will disagree? All four conventionally defined conservative justices as well as Anthony Kennedy would presumably be the necessary majority to slap down this most controversial and invasive component of Obamacare.

Yet even if the mandate is struck down, it is important to realize that we basically live in a post-Constitutional United States. The problems with the health care reform go beyond the individual mandate, yet no one prominent has questioned these other elements. Most fundamentally, Congress is supposed to only legislate according to its powers outlined in Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution. Health care is nowhere mentioned. From top to bottom, this law is a constitutional atrocity.

In October 2009, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about the constitutionality of the health care reform bill, to which she replied, “Are you serious?” Surely, no serious person would ask such a question.

Yet she is not alone in this automatically dismissive attitude. It is not unique to this party or to this issue. In the fall of 2002, when Congressman Ron Paul suggested that a war with Iraq would require a congressional declaration for it to be Constitutional, a fellow Republican told him declarations were anachronistic and a Democratic Congressman said he was being “frivolous,” Paul reports.

Surely, if the federal government can fudge the process by which it goes to war—an activity that typically throws entire societies into chaos and, in the case of Iraq, probably led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, rationalized by nothing but transparent propaganda—then what is a little individual mandate going to hurt? The president can already order the death of anyone on the planet by declaring him an enemy to be liquidated—how much more invasive is a health care mandate than that? Indeed, if Congress can regulate education and energy, food and drugs, corporate practices and small businesses, gun ownership and farming practices, retirement programs and building codes, what’s one more imposition going to hurt?

The federal government has been far outside its constitutional bounds for over a century. Ever since the New Deal and especially the permanent warfare state that emerged in the last six or seven decades, there has been no real constitutional brake on any of its aspirations, except on the margins, in anomalous cases. On the other hand, upholding the individual mandate would indeed push the envelope just a bit more, as Washington would not have the precedent to force you to buy anything it wanted you to, and some of the last remnants of American economic liberty would be destroyed. If they rule to uphold Obamacare’s mandate, we have much to mourn; yet even if they get this one right, there will be little to celebrate.

Rather than raising the debt limit, Congress should recognize the federal government has reached debt saturation and therefore stop incurring new debt! Federal revenues for 2012 likely will amount to about $2.2 trillion, an amount roughly equal to the 2004 federal budget. To balance the 2012 budget, Congress simply needs to adopt 2004 spending levels. Was the federal government really too small just 8 years ago?

But Washington has a serious spending addiction-- and in spite of all the talk about spending cuts, there are none contained in today’s legislation. According to the non-partisan CATO Institute, this bill merely commits Congress to spending less than it otherwise would. Even if this Congress could bind a future congress, I doubt many Americans would define a cut as spending less on unconstitutional programs than Congress originally planned to spend. The bill also assumes large tax increases in its revenue projections, with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2012 calculated into the “baseline” numbers. This assumption will make it very difficult politically for Republicans to extend current tax rates beyond 2012.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this deal is the “Super Congress” provision. This is nothing more than a way to disenfranchise the majority of Congress by denying them the chance for meaningful participation in the crucial areas of entitlement and tax reform. It cedes power to draft legislation to a special commission, hand-picked by the House and Senate leadership. The legislation produced by this commission will be fast-tracked, and Members will not have the opportunity to offer amendments. Approval of the recommendations of the “Super Congress” is tied to yet another debt ceiling increase. This guarantees that Members will face tremendous pressure to vote for whatever comes out of this commission-- even if it includes tax increases. This provision is an excellent way to keep spending decisions out of the reach of members who are not on board with the leadership's agenda.

As many of you may have heard, the BATFE has sent an unprecedented “demand letter” to all the licensed firearms dealers in the four border states of Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Texas. This will require dealers to report to the BATFE the names and addresses and serial numbers of all purchases of more than one semi-automatic rifle, with a detachable magazine, over 22 caliber, within a 5 business day period. This new and extreme regulation goes into effect for all purchases that occur on or after August 14th, 2011. The BATFE has issued a new form 3310.12 that FFL dealers have to complete and return to the BATFE starting on this date and going forward.

The BATFE and Department of Justice has made this demand on us and on you, with no Congressional authorization. Therefore today J&G Sales has filed suit in the Washington DC federal court challenging this illegitimate regulation. We are being assisted in this law suit by the NRA as well. We hope the outcome of our challenge will be a reversal of this unconstitutional regulation.

Thank you all for your support of the 2nd amendment and will keep you all updated as this case progresses.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers overrode several of Governor Beverly Perdue’s job-killing vetoes during a quick special session last week, making it abundantly clear that we’re determined to create a better business environment and help put North Carolinians back to work.

Five of the bills Perdue vetoed became law last week, including important, long-overdue reforms that will make North Carolina’s private economy – the sector that will lead us out of the recession – ripe for job creation.

Regulatory Reform

One of the laws, passed with huge bipartisan support, overhauls the state’s regulatory environment to provide more certainty and clarity for the private businesses that must follow state rules. Bureaucrats have added or changed more than 15,000 regulations over the past decade. Many are unnecessary, outdated rules that strangle the creativity and productivity of the state’s job creators.

In our reforms, one small change to a seemingly innocuous regulation regarding the height of fences around swimming pools at hotels, apartments and other businesses, already has saved those industries millions of dollars.

The Regulatory Reform Act received unanimous votes in the Senate and widespread support in the House, but the governor vetoed the bill anyway, trying to appease the environmental lobby. Our override signals to businesses that we won’t stand for overregulation, especially as they fight to make ends meet and keep people employed.

Medical Malpractice

It’s been proven time and time again in other states with similar laws: medical malpractice reforms that reduce excessive frivolous lawsuits will attract loads of new medical jobs and expand access to care, especially for those in rural areas.

Under the current system, doctors must administer dozens of unnecessary tests and procedures to avoid lawsuits, and the expensive cost of that defensive medicine is passed on to taxpayers in the form of higher insurance rates and taxpayer-funded medical programs for the poor.

Our reforms, which will take effect Oct. 1, will persuade more doctors want to practice in North Carolina, where they’ll be able to see more patients and treat them more effectively.

ESC Jobs

Another law enacted this week reforms one of the most dysfunctional state government agencies – the Employment Security Commission. It’s an agency buried in debt to the federal government. Among other changes, the new law moves ESC to the Department of Commerce, where it will be better managed.

Fair, Legal and Competitive

The two most important responsibilities of the legislature this year were balancing the state budget and drawing fair, legal and competitive congressional and legislative districts that reflect the past decade’s population changes.

The budget became law in June, and we completed a historically transparent redistricting process last week. North Carolina’s elections will, for the foreseeable future, be more competitive than ever before.

Within months after Barack Obama became President, a covert operation was launched to allow gun sales to people with ties to the Mexican drug cartels, ostensibly in hopes that those guns would lead agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to cartel members in Mexico. The name of the operation was “Project Gunrunner,” and the details of it included allowing straw purchasers to buy not hundreds but thousands of guns, approximately 2,500, which they were then to walk into Mexico while having their movements traced by the ATF. The problem is that the ATF was not able to keep track of the weapons, and to date only 1,300 of the approximate 2,500 have been recovered.

An even bigger problem is that at least one federal officer, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, lost his life in a shootout with an individual armed with a weapon sold during Gunrunner, and violence in Mexico jumped exponentially when the weapons made their way into that country. For example, 958 people were killed in Mexico during the month of March 2010 alone, and at least 150 Mexican law enforcement officers have been killed since early 2009. (A little-known fact is that many of the guns sold during Gunrunner were assault rifles and similar weapons that are easily converted from semiautomatic to full-auto. In other words, our ATF looked the other way while men with criminal ties entered gun stores in Arizona and purchased weapons that are now de facto machine guns on the streets of Mexico and the U.S. Southern border.)

At the outset it is important to note that as this operation moved from one of overseeing the selling and subsequent international transport of weapons, to one in which law enforcement was supposed to trace the guns back to cartel members and make arrests, its name changed from Gunrunner to "Fast and Furious.” Yet they are not so much two separate operations as they are two parts of one large covert action. Thus it’s not uncommon to hear people use the labels Gunrunner and Fast and Furious interchangeably.

The beginnings of Gunrunner can at least be traced back as far as Feb. 15, 2009, when President Obama authorized $10 million for it via the stimulus package. His signature on that document renders his subsequent denials of any knowledge of Gunrunner questionable at best. And on April 2, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at the Mexico/United States Arms Trafficking Conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in which he boasted of overseeing the implementation of Gunrunner.

Last night I couldn't figure out at first blush how Boehner/Reid managed to get their "numbers" to work. Well, when I looked at it again this morning, it snapped into focus, along with a backhanded comment and, yes, math.

Ok, ok, not really math. It was just a calendar.

See, the Bush Tax Cuts and the FICA holiday expire at or before the end of 2012. And guess who's going to be President then - either having just been re-elected or much worse, as a lame duck?

That's right - Obama.

So Republicans, and most-importantly "Tea Partiers" - how many of you want to keep your jobs? Because if you do, you had damn well better not allow this piece of crap from Reid/Boehner to pass! If this bill passes then every Republican who votes for it needs to face a primary challenge and every Democrat needs to be ejected from office.

In other words, we have to eat our peas, and we have to do it now. The history on this path is clear: Whenever the Congress claims they will both cut spending and raise taxes, the tax increases always happen but the spending cuts never do.

We cannot fix what ails our economy in terms of artificial economic support which cannot last forever until and unless we balance the Federal budget. It's really that simple, although nobody wants to say it. The economy has undergone a roughly 10-12% artificial "stimulus" from deficit spending over the last three years and yet as time has gone on the impact of this in GDP reports has dissipated but not only does the debt remain the deficits are remaining too!

This is the slippage that inevitably comes from longer-term stimulative efforts. "Pump priming" can work because of the surprise factor - it causes people to alter behavior. But once it becomes "not a surprise" then the behavior is no longer altered, it's now ingrained and the artificial support means that people no longer have a desire to strive forward - they instead suck on the offered "free tit" and get fat.

For those who think I was too subtle up above, let's spell it out: The Bush Tax cuts, and the FICA cut, both will expire at the end of 2012. President Obama, and he will be President on that day, will veto any attempt to extend them.

In fact, the Reid/Boehner "deficit reduction" plan that was "agreed to" last night expressly expects the expiration of all of these cuts, as does the CBO's scoring.

How do I know this? This little line in the CBO ditty:

As requested by the House and Senate leadership, CBO also calculated the net budgetary impact of the plans if the discretionary savings are measured relative to CBO’s January baseline projections.

The CBO's January baseline included expiration of both the FICA credit and the Bush Tax Cuts, as the CBO as a general rule, unless instructed otherwise, uses the state of the current law to produce it's baseline scenarios - not "what if" possible changes.

For those who say there are "no revenues" in this plan, and that there is no plan to "raise taxes",you're lying. There are monstrous revenues (tax increases) starting in January of 2013 - depending on who's numbers you use they amount to somewhere around $400 billion annually. Despite this we're still going to add close to $10 trillion in new debt to the system over the next ten years under the "Boehner/Reid" plan because there are also no actual spending decreases!

Today, Radley Balko asked his readers an interesting question as to whether appointing or electing law enforcement leadership had anything to do with police misconduct. It was an interesting question so I decided to run some analysis on our data and see if there were any correlations between misconduct rates and leadership selection types.

The results were sort of interesting.

First, just looking at overall misconduct per capita rates the results appear to indicate that agencies with elected leaders have less misconduct. Our 2009 Annual Report indicated that the national police misconduct rate was a projected 980.64 officers per 100,000. When we segment that into local Police Departments and Sheriff’s Offices we find that Police departments where leaders are appointed had a misconduct rate of 990.09 per 100,000 while Sheriffs offices where leaders are elected had a misconduct rate of 644.14 per 100,000.

Our 2010 data is somewhat similar in the breakdown. While the overall misconduct rate was 977.98 per 100,000, police departments had a misconduct rate of 1082.04 per 100,000 and sheriff’s agencies had a misconduct rate of 706.74 per 100,000.

So, it would seem that elected officials do better than appointed officials. However, when we look at the number of agencies and leaders implicated in misconduct we see something different.

In 2009 our data indicated that 10.8% of police agencies had officers involved in police misconduct while 7.8% of sheriff’s departments had officers implicated in acts of misconduct. But, in 2010 14% of police agencies had officers implicated in misconduct and 18% of sheriff’s departments had officers implicated in misconduct. Additionally, in 2010, 2.5% of police chiefs were implicated in acts of misconduct while 3.5% of sheriffs were implicated in misconduct. So, when we examine the numbers by agency the picture is a bit more muddled.

However, I personally think that, more importantly than how law enforcement leaders are selected, the laws and policies that govern those leaders and the people they lead are at least as equally important, if not more so. After all, even if you have a good leader in place, what good is it if state laws and local union agreements make it impossible for that leader to hold officers accountable for acts of misconduct?

Dallas TX police officer arrested on domestic violence assault charges in unspecified incident and unlawful restraint after allegedly pushing woman to the ground then cuffing her & threatening her with jail time after arguing with her about an ex-girlfriend. [1] http://ow.ly/1vcdIj

As the Federal debt started exploding a few years ago I tried to look ahead and figure out what would happen. Lots of bad things of course, but one potential outcome, as I mentioned in a blog post a few days ago, was that a new wave of politicians would get elected and scrap most or all of the nanny state agencies to cut expenses. Sort of “every cloud has a silver lining” kind of thing.

I should know better than to think any government operation could have a “silver lining”.

What I had never considered, not even in my most pessimistic moments was that the Feds would find a way to turn the crisis into a way to further expand their control. Instead of control weakening as funding became harder to get there is a path whereby funding is obtained by increasing control. Sure, I know about the war on drugs and confiscating property “involved” in a drug crime being used to fund law enforcement. But this is much, much worse.

I recently had a reliable source tell me the EPA, OSHA, and other regulatory agencies have been told to explore how they can supply their own revenue such that they become self supporting. “Run like a business” and even potentially make a profit. My source explicitly called out the EPA and OSHA but one can easily imagine how this mandate will be extended to the ATF and hundreds of other government organizations.

If the color didn’t just drain out of your face and you nearly fainted you either don’t have a very good imagination or you have a government job.

The only way these regulators can “make” money is through fines and confiscation of property. One of the examples given to me was of dust production in a particular type of facility of which there are thousands all across the country. I’ll not name them to avoid giving the Feds easy targets but these facilities have existed for many decades and are an essential part of our infrastructure. The regulations say that if more than 0.125” of dust builds up on the interior surfaces of the buildings they must be cleaned or else they can be fined. The problem is that no one knows of a fix for the problem. It would take 7 to 8 hours to clean a facility. It’s a problem similar to the classic “If one man can dig a post hole in two minutes how many minutes would it take two men to dig a post hole?” It just can’t be done in less than 7 to 8 hours. Once the facility goes back into production the dust will exceed spec in about 30 minutes. Obviously a facility that is in maintenance mode 15 times as much as it is in production mode is not viable. So maybe they could just pay the fine and figure that is “just the cost of doing business”. That doesn’t work either.

If the Feds come back a week later and they are out of spec the fine can be doubled. And doubled again the next week (or day) if they are still in production. Basically it amounts to after the first fine the operator will have to shutdown the facility or find a permanent fix to the dust problem—and no such solution exists. Dust, in many situations, cannot be significantly reduced.

Numerous other examples were given to me of extremely low-hanging fruit that the Feds can “harvest” at will if they only know where to look. This type of problem exists essentially everywhere. It’s Huffman’s rule of firearms law on a massive scale applied to nearly every industry and every person (remember Three Felonies a Day?). That is how they can generate revenue, “become profitable”, and our country becomes a police state.

Gun owner registration … bans on semi-automatic firearms … adoption of a UN gun control treaty -- all of these issues could very well be decided over the next 24 hours.

Both houses of Congress will be voting on a debt ceiling bill that establishes a legislative committee with TREMENDOUS powers. Fox News is calling this committee a SUPER CONGRESS, because its legislative proposals (which could include gun control provisions) CANNOT be filibustered or amended in the Senate or House.

To understand what a huge deal this is, consider that House Speaker John Boehner is able to keep a mountain of gun control bills from coming to the floor of the House. That’s the power of the Speaker.

And in the Senate, we have been able to kill much of the gun control agenda by filibustering legislation (that is, requiring the Majority Leader to get a supermajority or 60 votes in order to pass gun control).

The most recent example of this occurred earlier this year when we defeated a radical, anti-gun judicial nomination (Goodwin Liu) using the filibuster. The filibuster has been our saving grace in the Senate, but that could be tossed within the next 24 hours.

Regarding the debt ceiling compromise, here’s what one legislative analyst (inside a Republican office on Capitol Hill) had to say:

Right now, we have limited protection from the schemes of the left – even if they have some Republican support, we have a speaker who wouldn’t bring horrible bills to the floor, and we have the Senate filibuster.

Both of these are rendered moot by the Super committee. There is NO Senate filibuster on the product they report. The Speaker CANNOT stop a vote in the House….

[Hence], 22 liberal Republicans can join the Congressional Democrats and the President in: Closing the gun show “loophole,” banning semi-automatic weapons, creating a national handgun registration, or ordering state gun laws moot.

A super highway for gun control legislation? This is incredibly unconstitutional! We don’t elect a Congress, which can then turn around and elect a SUPER committee. We need to make sure this never lands on the President’s desk.

ACTION: Please email and call your Representative and Senators. Urge them to vote NO on establishing this SUPER CONGRESS with unconstitutional powers.

In closing out my interview with my friend Judge Andrew Napolitano last week, I told him that I believe we are now in a virtual civil war in this country between those who believe in the sanctity of private property and those who believe it is the government’s duty to provide for us. I then asked him, “Where do you, as an individual, see all this eventually leading?”

The Judge’s full response to my question is worth repeating and will certainly give you a lot to think about:

“Well, there’s a couple ways it could go. The country could break apart into different countries. There are serious movements on the part of some [states] to secede. The notion that secession is un-American is absurd. The whole country was founded when it seceded from Great Britain, and the act of joining the Union is merely a legislative act, and any legislative act can be undone by a legislature.

“The states formed the federal government, not the other way around, and the powers they gave to the federal government they can take back. So I could see liberty-loving people flocking to different parts of the country. New Hampshire, Texas come to mind. Things go on in those states and in the government that I don’t always agree with, but they’re not as heavily regulated as, say, the People’s Republic of California or Massachusetts or New Jersey.

“We could also devolve into a revolution, where blood is actually shed over the rights of human beings. Now, it’s difficult to talk about that, but if you look at the very first act of Congress, it was the Declaration of Independence. It’s still the law of the land, and it basically says when the government takes away your rights, it is your duty to abolish the government.

“And if you can’t abolish the government by elections — because no matter who gets elected, they just keep stealing our property and our freedom — then you have to abolish the government by some other means. It’s lawful to discuss this at this time in our history. It is certainly not lawful to fire guns. But when you strike at the king, you must kill him. If you don’t, you get executed.”

Statists on both the right and the left would like us to forget about a little inconvenient document like the Declaration of Independence, but the fact is that it laid the foundation for our Constitution, which did not become the law of the land until 1789.

Does this mean that Abraham Lincoln was wrong to force the Southern states to stay in the Union. Yes, absolutely. No one has the legal authority to force a group of people whose ancestors helped form an organization to remain in that organization. Forced membership is not freedom; it’s slavery.

Speaking of slavery, we all agree that American slavery was morally wrong in every respect, but slavery was not the issue with Abraham Lincoln. He repeatedly made it clear that he would be willing to continue to allow slavery if that’s what it took to keep the Union together. The Civil War was not about slavery; it was about revenues that would be lost to the federal government if the Southern states were allowed to secede.

High-profile libertarians like Judge Napolitano and John Stossel are true American heroes for defending both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in this day and age of a Beckless Fox News. And if they’re willing to take the arrows by speaking out on an international stage, they deserve our full support. That said, if you believe in human freedom, make it a point to watch them as often as possible.

Remembrance

To die for one’s country is not only an act of bravery, it is THE act of bravery. For soldiers, it is just an extension of their military career, a part of their duty. As leaders have asked their soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society, it is only right for leaders to go through the same motion. They should practice what they have preached.

As war is seen as a noble act, tu sat serves as redemption in case of defeat. It is also a way to tell the enemy: “You might have won the battle/war but you don’t deserve to win because you don’t have the chinh nghia (just cause).” And it is not only just cause: it is the moral belief that the cause they are fighting for deserves their total sacrifice. Continues below

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Core Creek Militia

==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC.

The Seven Blackbirds

==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek.

Requiem Aeternam -
Eternal Rest Grant unto Them
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My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
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My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) *Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket.
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*General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below.
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*The Attack On Fort Stedman
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"His Colored Friends"
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Lee's Surrender
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My Black NC Kinfolks
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Punished For Being Caught!

Great Grandfather Koonce

He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.